Our final two days activation plan involved us driving from Bobingen back to Luxembourg via eight activations, with a one night stopover in Schriesheim at the Hotel Ludwigstal. Like all the other hotels used on this tour this hotel was booked well in advance via the booking.com website. In some cases we pay in advance, in others we "pay at the property". Over the last 10 years we have found that booking.com provides a good choice of accommodation which fits around the routes we choose each day. We would prefer to stay in one place rather than move on every night, but this isn't always possible if the summits are spread about as they so often are. When they are clustered together it's possible to stay in one place for three or four nights and cover all surrounding summits that can be accessed on foot from the car parking place in less than one hour. This is why we stayed in Bobingen for three nights - there were plenty of summits within range for three days of activity.
Wednesday 3rd July 2024
DM/BW-111 Hohe Brach
An hour after leaving Bobingen we were parked up near to DM/BW-111. A 10 minute walk with minimal ascent took us into the activation zone. I didn't taken any photos and now some weeks later writing this I cannot remember any detail about the summit... My log says I was QRV at 0736z-0751z. 10m was tried and I failed, so all QSOs were on 40m CW and 20m SSB.
DM/BW-107 Katzenbuckel
Now this summit must have been more interesting as I took a couple of photos. We parked near the lake after turning right at a closed down hotel called Villa Katzenbuckel. It took me 13 minutes to reach the highest point on the 6 point summit. The blue line is the 800m long walking route:
Victor and I split up on the ascent but when I reached the top we were within shouting distance - just about far enough apart to both operate on 10m on different modes at the same time. At 10:25z when I made my last QSO - the sky had ionised itself enough to give me a 10m multiplier with a single QSO on SSB with Sergio, CT1HMN. All the other contacts were on 40m CW. There was a large tall monument on the highest point surrounded by trees.
I operated about 75m away from this monument. Returning to the car we had our lunch before driving to our third and final summit of the day.
DM/BW-114 Konigstuhl
I have to hang my head in shame as I do not know what goes on at this touristy place above Heidelberg. There were masses of free car parks and signage everywhere. Victor went off into the woods near the car park, away from any buildings and people and I went towards some gates and a terraced area with a seat near a catering outlet. It had been raining heavily and the sky was still threatening more.
There are no photographs. 28 minutes operation brought me just 12 contacts, which included four on 10m with ZS6FY. DH1KJ, LZ3QE and II7WWA (Special call). It started to rain heavily and I swiftly packed up. The rainstorm continued strongly as made our way to what was to be our 4th activation of the day, into the Hesse region to visit DM/HE-047, which would have only meant a 700m walk from the car park each way. With the rain streaming down the hilly roads en-route we decided to abandon the drive there and turned round to head back to our final German hotel in Schreisheim.
Thursday 4th July 2024 (last day)
DM/RP-482 Rahnels
After missing out activating in the DM/HE area due to the stormy weather the day before, our final day took us through the Rheinland Phalz and Saarland regions before finishing off with our final Luxembourg summit of LX/LX-005. We would activate five summits, of which two were uniques for me.
DM/RP-482 was a unique and shall we say, one of the more adventurous summits to reach, as information on access seemed quite difficult to find, or so I thought... For some reason I did not look at the SMP/SOTLAS websites where there was a track lodged by DJ2TG, but I found the route he had taken by trial and error on the way down!
We drove on a long and winding single track road through the forest from the town of Kallstadt and found room to park the Opel Mokka on the grass verge at 49.469N 8.086E. The walk up to reach the track was a little overgrown with brambles, but was OK. I later realised that there was a GPX track depicting what is the best and shortest route to the open area on the summit - lodged on the SMP/SOTAMaps website by DJ2TG. I came back down that way, but walked this circuit using the road on the way up:
The 10m multiplier was secured by working Phillip ZS6FY, despite the early hour. The QSO was logged at 07:42z. After another 10 minutes on 40m CW the rain started, so I packed up and made my way back down on what I later found to be the DJ2TG route, which was a very nice unspoilt path through the woods.
DM/RP-432 Potzberg
Our plan was to activate DM/RP-463 Grosser Hausberg next, but this was not to be. An unavoidable umleitung stopped us - and no diversion was possible. The road from the village of Bann was being resurfaced and the roadmen waved us to go back. We therefore went on to Potzberg which was another wooded drive on summit. There was a tall brick tower and a bench and table on the summit. There were no 10m contacts to be had just after 10z, so 40m CW was used again to qualify the summit.
After Potzberg we headed back ttowards Luxembourg to activate three summits I visited in 2023: DM/SR-006, DM/RP-171 and LX/LX-005. I won't report in detail on these three "drive on" summits as I have written them up previously.
We were booked in at a hotel near the airport for the last night. Before we went there we put the car though a car wash. I rose at 4am the next morning to hear the UK election results on BBC World. As my flight back to Manchester was an early one I had bid my farewell to Victor GI4ONL the previous night after our dinner. The taxi collected me at 5am and I was back in Manchester by 8.30am.
We each activated 28 summits giving us 194 points in 8 days.
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